Showing posts with label Fine Dining. Show all posts

Friday 26 July 2013

Parcevall Hall Gardens, Pateley Bridge and the Yorke Arms

Lesser Known Parts of Wharfedale, and Dinner at a (Then) Michelin Starred Restaurant in Nidderdale

The business model of the Yorke Arms at Ramsgill in Nidderdale, no longer involves it being a restaurant (nor, despite its name, a pub). The first two parts of this post remain valid, the third is of historical interest only.

North Yorkshire

Like last year, our wedding anniversary foray into the world of fine dining took us to God’s Own County. We even followed the same route as far as Bolton Priory, but then, instead of heading east we continued north along Wharfedale.

Parcevall Hall Gardens

We turned right, following a smaller road which climbed into a side valley and thence onto Greenhow Hill. Half way up we took an even smaller road through the remote hamlet of Skyreholme to its end at Parcevall Hall.

Sir John Yorke purchased this land in 1549 and the earliest parts of Parcevall Hall date from his tenure. Sir John Milner bought the by then dilapidated hall in 1924, rebuilt it and landscaped the gardens. The hall is now a retreat centre for the Church of England's Bradford diocese, but the gardens are open to the public.

A rose garden and rockery stand above the house…..

Lynne in the rockery, Parcevall Hall

…..which is a low rambling building of solid Yorkshire stone….

Parcevall Hall, North Yorkshire

…while below it a series of terraces tumble down the sun-drenched hillside. (Other weather conditions are available, and this being North Yorkshire….)

Terraced gardens, Parcevall Hall

Pateley Bridge, Nidderdale

On the other side of Greenhow Hill is Pateley Bridge, the biggest settlement in Nidderdale and full of visitors on a fine summer afternoon.

We had a look round the Nidderdale museum, thoughtfully laid out in the former workhouse….

The Nidderale Museum in the old workhouse, Pateley Bridge

… and bought an ice cream at the ‘oldest sweet shop in England’.

Lynne eats an ice cream, Pateley Bridge

Ramsgill

We continued to Ramsgill, five miles further up the dale past Gouthwaite Reservoir - which features in the opening credits of Emmerdale.

Like Parcevall Hall, Ramsgill was owned by the Yorke family and in 1840 they rebuilt the hamlet as a cluster of handsome stone buildings round a green.

The Yorke Arms, Ramsgill

The centrepiece was the inn, the Yorke Arms, now (in 2013, anyway) a ‘restaurant with rooms’. Head chef and co-owner Frances Atkins was awarded a Michelin star in 2003 and has maintained it ever since.[Update: Frances Atkins sold the Yorke Arms to entrepreneur Jonathan Turner in 2017, but was persuaded to stay on as head chef. The Michelin Star was lost in the 2020 guide (published 07/10/2019). In 2020 the Yorke Arms reinvented itself as a 'country house for hire'. And then came Covid.]

What follows is a review of a restaurant where nobody can ever eat. I could delete it, but I have chosen not to.

The Yorke Arms and the village green, Ramsgill

Canapés

Our bedroom overlooked the green, but we had pre-dinner drinks and studied the menu on the rear patio beside a brook, overlooking a field and surrounded by lavender and curry plants. Our drinks were accompanied by a slate (Please Put it on a Plate: John Finnemore on You Tube) bearing 3 small mouthfuls and a few flavoured almonds and hazelnuts.

The chickpea purée dusted with black seeds (nigella?) on a tiny biscuit was pleasant, the salmon with salmon mousse on a round of brioche was excellent, but the tiny cube of pork rillettes flavoured with a bloblet of intensely concentrated apple sauce, was toe-curlingly wonderful. There was a nasturtium flower or two as well; they added little except colour, but are a feature of the Yorke Arms experience.

A cottage in Ramsgill

Just as we started to think it was too cool to sit outside we were told our table was ready and we moved into the dining room. Tables were well separated and pleasingly large for two, though foursomes were eating at the same sized table. There were almost as many waiters as tables and service was attentive but not obtrusive.

The dining room, The Yorke Arms, Ramsgill

Breads and Amuse-bouche

A tray of breads, sourdough, cheese bread, wholemeal, arrived with a bowl of olive oil and some butter. The oil was the finest I have ever dipped my bread in, its deep olive flavour a million miles away from the stuff we get from the supermarket. I checked out the butter, too. It was good, but did not stand out in the same way – I am not sure butter can.

The amuse-bouche was a disc of pea purée, surmounted by a few tiny pealed peas (is life not too short to peal a pea?) and a nasturtium petal. The flavour of fresh peas is always pleasingly, but this was raised to another level by the gentle application of a blow-torch to create a sort of pea brulée.

There were two menus with four or five choices per course. The Yorke House Classics looked interesting, but on such a day the ‘taste of summer menu’ was irresistible.

Starters

Lynne’s starter of ‘truffled rabbit with chicken press’ was wrapped in thin ham. A similar dish at La Bécasse had been overwhelmed by the smokiness of its wrapping, but here everything was in harmony, and set off by tiny mushrooms, the inevitable nasturtium petals and the discovery, deep in the ‘press’, of a burst of intensely sweet pickle. Lynne was happy with her starter, though she could detect no truffle flavour.

I chose ‘three smoked fish’ and was presented with a circle of small parcels surrounding a blob of green and left to work out what was what. Most of the parcels were wrapped in shaved courgette, but a piece of langoustine sat alone. There was smoked mackerel and smoked swordfish, salmon mousse and a small pile of the tiniest shrimps anyone ever bothered to peel. That is what I thought I ate, but I cannot rule out a misidentification or two. The word ‘pistachio’ had appeared on the menu and I presumed that was the central green blob, but sadly it failed to deliver. Although impressed by the cleverness, I liked the dish, but did not love it.

Mains

Lynne’s main was turbot, which had been heavily pushed earlier and, looking round us, seemed a popular choice. The fine and delicate flavour of the fish had been enhanced by light and sympathetic cooking. The turbot was partnered by a large scallop and accompanied by spinach, a skinned cherry tomato, a blob of mashed potato, pea purée and a few baby peas. The scallop was hardly cooked; soft and wonderfully flavoured it had been steeped in a sauce we could not at first identify. We wiped up the remains on the plate with our fingers, licked them and realised it was vanilla. It was the first unusual flavour combination of the evening and it should never have worked, but it did, perfectly.

My ‘shin of rose veal’ had some of the cheaper, slow cooked meat and slightly more of an expensive more briefly cooked cut. Both were excellent as was the sweetbread, a piece of offal that requires, and on this occasion received, precise cooking. A roundel of carrot on the veal exploded with the extraordinarily sweet flavour of amaretto. Tasting again, unable to believe it, I found amaretto mingling with the jus. Then a baby turnip smeared with potato cleared my nasal passages with an onrush of mustard. I was losing faith in the ability of my eyes to predict the next flavour. Was this brilliant or dire? I finished the plate and found myself wanting more, so I decided it must be brilliant.

Wine

This mixture of fish and meat could have made choosing a wine difficult had not the summer sunshine suggested rosé. Sancerre rosé is never cheap, but the restaurant mark-up made it distinctly expensive, moreso as it delivered nicely on acidity, but could have done with more fruit.

Desserts and Dessert Wine

My dessert involved a lychee soufflé, which was good if not very lychee-y, an almond biscuit and a jasmine tea sorbet, which was delightful, possibly the second best sorbet I have ever tasted. The best was the coconut sorbet in Lynne’s dessert which so powerfully concentrated the flavour of coconut it made my ears ring. The peach praline and rose petal jelly were excellent, too. A glass of Rustenberg ‘straw wine’, a South African take on the traditional Italian practice of concentrating flavours by drying grapes on straw mats, slipped down easily. It was ‘an unctuous dessert wine, with moreish flavours of marmalade and stone fruit’ to quote a wine merchant who sells it. It could not have been better.

Coffee and Petits Fours

Coffee and petits fours in the lounge produced a pleasing selection of sweeties, a ball of ice-cream encased in white chocolate particularly stood out.

And so ended a meal which lived up to its Michelin star billing. Frances Atkins is one of only six women in Britain to hold such an award. Her style is essential traditional but with sudden outbreaks of quirkiness, some of which border on brilliance, others misfire, but all were worth trying.

Frances Atkins
(Picture filched from Great British Chefs(click to see video))

The meal was well balanced, and although individual dishes were small the overall quantity left us well fed but not stuffed, thus allowing us to enjoy the next mornings breakfast we had already paid for.

Lynne ready for Breakfast,The Yorke Arms, Ramsgill

And what does a Michelin starred kitchen do for a full English breakfast? Firstly they use top quality ingredients – the bacon and black pudding were sublime. And then there was the scrambled egg. Traditionally I scramble eggs on a Saturday morning; this time I let the Yorke Arms do it. I had thought I was pretty good, but now I must reassess my technique, I never get it this buttery, this creamy, this smooth, this…. I could go on.

'Fine Dining' posts

Abergavenny and the Walnut Tree (2010)
Ludlow and La Bécasse (2011) (restaurant closed, post withdrawn)
Ilkley and The Box Tree(2012)
Pateley Bridge and the Yorke Arms (2013) (No longer a restaurant, post renamed Parceval Gardens and Pateley Br)
The Harrow at Little Bedwyn (2014)
The Slaughters and the Lords of the Manor (2015)
Loam, Fine Dining in Galway (2016)
Penarth and Restaurant James Sommerin (2017) (restaurant closed, post withdrawn. JS has a new restaurant in Penarth)
The Checkers, Montgomery (2017) (no longer a restaurant, post withdrawn. Now re-opened under new management)
Tyddyn Llan, Llandrillo, Denbighshire (2018)
Fischer's at Baslow Hall, Derbyshire (2019)
Hambleton Hall, Rutland (2021)
The Olive Tree, Queensberry Hotel, Bath (2022)
Dinner at Pensons near Tenbury Wells (2023) (restaurant closed Dec 2023, post withdrawn)

Thursday 26 July 2012

Ilkley and The Box Tree

Driving the few miles from Bolton Abbey to Ilkley took us out of North Yorkshire and the Dales National Park and into the City of Bradford - at least that is what the sign said; the rolling green fields and dry stone walls did not look like anybody’s idea of Bradford or any other city.

Ilkley looks and feels like the country town it is. Athough it is an ancient settlement pre-dating the Domesday Book, modern Ilkley is largely a result of its development as a Victorian spa town. As a spa it never attained the grandeur of nearby Harrogate, but it did all right. The famous moor (visiting is inadvisable without appropriate headgear - or bah t’at as the locals are alleged to say) rises to the south of the town.

Ilkley Moor rises to the south of the town

Older buildings include the Manor House, now an art gallery, which is set back from the main road.

The Manor House, Ilkley

All Saint’s Church is a largely Victorian construction, though there has been a house of worship on the site since the 7th century. The three Saxon crosses which once stood outside but were moved into the church in 1860 are particularly impressive.

All Saint's, Ilkley

Ilkley is a foodie town featuring, among other attractions, a branch of Betty’s Tearooms (a delight so far unsavoured), a serious fishmonger’s and Lishman’s butcher's shop. David Lishman, one of Rick Stein’s food heroes, has twice won the national sausage championship so, inevitably, we went home with a kilo of sausages and a slab of black pudding. Pre-eminent, though, is the Box Tree which, in 1977, was one of the first restaurants in Britain to gain two Michelin stars. Fortunes have varied and stars have been lost and gained over the years but in its present incarnation under chef/owner Simon Gueller it has held a Michelin star since 2005. Marco Pierre White served his apprenticeship at the Box Tree and became a partner in the business in 2010.

[Update: At the start of 2018 Simon Gueller decided to let go of the reins in the kitchen and appointed Kieran Smith head chef and in October the Michelin inspectors took away their star. The decision was a surprise to many and a great disappointment to Gueller who said he had every faith in Kieran Smith, but the two parted company soon after. In September 2019, two head chefs later, Simon and Rena Gueller put the restaurant up for sale. In 2020 just before the arrival of Covid-19 they changed their minds. They did sell later in the year. Adam Frontal is now the owner, Kieran Smith is the head chef and they are operating a fine dining restaurant with a modern French style.]

The building was constructed in the 1720s, and if the décor does not quite date from that time, it has been criticised as being old-fashioned and stuffy. I think ‘retro’ is a better word, and we found it relaxed and comfortable rather than stuffy.

The Box Tree, Ilkley

Rejecting the Menu Gourmande as being more than we could eat and the Menu de Jour as rather tame, we went for the à la carte which offered an amuse-bouche and four or five choices for each course. The style leans heavily towards classic French resulting in a menu of tortured Franglais. English may lack words for velouté, terrine or foie gras (fat liver? Perhaps not) but ‘paupiette of squab pigeon’ was not the only uncomfortable linguistic juxtaposition.

The amuse-bouche, velouté de topinambour, came only in French. Although my French is modest I thought my menu French was pretty good but I had to ask about topinambour. It is, I learned, Jerusalem artichoke - so why not say so? Two huge bowls arrived with an amuse-bouche sized depression in the middle containing several small cubes of artichoke and a tiny heap of grated parmesan. The velouté was poured on top. The ratio of china to food was absurd, but the rich flavour of the velouté and the wonderfully old-socky parmesan made that a forgivable eccentricity.

The scallops in Lynne’s starter were, of course, ‘hand-dived’. I doubt it does anything for the flavour, but we appreciated the nod towards sustainability. They were huge and meaty, not necessarily the ideal texture for a scallop, but well flavoured, as these giants sometimes are not. The broad beans had been peeled (the sine qua non of fine dining!) but it was the slices of rich and powerful summer truffles which made the dish. The accompanying glass of unoaked Australian chardonnay was undistinguished.

The menu prominently featured foie gras and dishes à la Perigordine. Two foie gras dishes would have been over the top, but two Perigord inspired dishes seemed a good idea so I started with the terrine of Perigord foie gras with a salad of smoked eel and granny smith apple.

The slab of foie gras was generous in size and everything I could have wished for. The tiny sticks of smoked eel arranged around it were a fine counterpoint and the apple, in tiny cubes and blobs of purée, did the same for the eel. The tiny green/red leaves scattered around allowed it to be called a salad but were mainly for decoration.

The dish came, for a price, with a small glass of Monbazillac. Monbazillac may be Sauternes’ poor relation, but although this example* lacked the honeyed quality of a top Sauternes, it was intensely sweet and possessed an acidity which sliced elegantly through the fattiness of the foie gras. I know there are ethical issues with foie gras; my excuse is that it is a traditional food and that I eat it very rarely. I suspect this is an inadequate justification, but Victorian writer and clergyman Sydney Smith’s idea of heaven was ‘eating foie gras to the sound of trumpets.’ I would merely swap the trumpets for a glass of Monbazillac.

Lynne’s main course – paupiettes of squab pigeon - also contained foie gras. The small legs were swiftly devoured, the paupiettes, two of them wrapped in Alsace bacon, were large and rich, indeed so large and rich she could not finish them; fortunately I was on hand to help. The petit pois à la Francais were undercooked for Lynne’s taste and the stock they were cooked in had become overly sweet as it reduced.

My fillet of beef (à la Perigordine, of course) was a wonderful piece of meat. Striking a balance between tenderness and texture while maintaining a full flavour is a difficult trick but was performed to perfection. The petits legumes (surely ‘baby vegetables’ would have done) involved several tiny, tiny turnips and the inevitable broad beans (they are in season as a glance at our vegetable patch confirms). They came with a Madeira sauce, which was sweet, as Madeira sauce will be, but not too sweet.

A wine from Perigord, or around, seemed appropriate, and my search of the extensive wine list came up with Domaine Capmartin from Madiran, a bit further south west, but near enough. Tasting it before the main course arrived, the tannin drowned out all other flavours, but drinking it with the food revealed booming fruit and unexpected subtleties. I was pleased with the choice.

I am not a great fan of desserts; once sugar becomes involved other flavours tend to back off and let it dominate. I can often be seduced by pineapples or pistachios, but on this occasion found myself opting for millefeuille of raspberries with lemon curd and elderflower. It was, without doubt, as pretty a dessert as I have ever seen, three roundels of pastry separated by henges of raspberries encircling the elderflower and lemon curd cream. It was a shame to break it up and eat it, but I did. The raspberries were fine, but they were only raspberries, the pastry was excellent, but the flavours of lemon curd and elderflower had rather gone missing.

Two very pretty deserts
The Box Tree, Ilkley

Lynne’s iced apricot parfait with apricot ice-cream and an almond biscuit was pretty, if not as pretty as my millefeuille. It delivered full-on apricot flavour (not my favourite, but that is my problem) and Lynne declared herself well satisfied. They were both good desserts, maybe very good desserts but not great desserts, which are rare indeed and must be sprinkled with magic powder as well as icing sugar.

Back in the lounge we enjoyed coffee and petits fours, delivered by tweezers from a wooden box resembling an antique medicine chest. The coffee was disappointing, but a glass of Remy Martin brought a fine evening to an appropriate conclusion.

Petits fours in the lounge
The Box Tree, Ilkley

In Ludlow last year I was very impressed with La Bécasse which promptly lost its Michelin star. The fault lay, perhaps, in their inexperienced front of house staff rather than the cooking. That will not happen to the Box Tree, where the every aspect of the service oozed professionalism. Pleasingly old-fashioned, both in its décor and its cooking, The Box Tree does not cook sous vide or insert things into baths of liquid nitrogen. It sticks to the French classics and does them very well, which is comforting in this ever changing world. It also a reminder of why they became classics in the first place.

*wines buffs might like to know it came from the respected Bordeaux négociants Borie-Manou

Monday 26 July 2010

Abergavenny and The Walnut Tree

Over the Welsh Border to a Town of Charm and History and a Once Great Restaurant Recently Restored to Glory

Wedding anniversary dinners have become a tradition over the last few years, and this year we went to Abergavenny to celebrate our 35th. 35th? Surely that can’t be right - but it is. Where did all those years go?

Abergavenny Castle

It’s a pleasant, prosperous looking little town, Abergavenny. It has a castle and a museum, water meadows where we strolled in sunshine beside the tumbling River Usk, an ancient church and an 11th century Tithe Barn containing a 21st century café and exhibition. And it’s full of people who welcome you and tell you things you never knew you wanted to know but are actually quite interesting.

Abergavenney Tithe Barn

We visited on the wrong day for the market, but the town has long had a foodie reputation, and the first and foremost reason for that, and for our visit, is The Walnut Tree restaurant a few miles away in the hamlet of Llanddewi Skirrid.

Opened in 1963 by Franco and Ann Taruschio, The Walnut Tree was once a beacon in an era of gastronomic darkness. They maintained the highest of standards for over thirty years, but after their retirement the restaurant fell on hard times. It eventually closed in 2007 despite, or maybe because of, featuring in the first of Gordon Ramsey’s restaurant rescue series. It reopened in 2008 and Shaun Hill, who held a Michelin star at the Merchant House in Ludlow, has returned the restaurant to its former glory and to Michelin star status.

The Walnut Tree, Llandewi Skirrid near Abergavenney

Restaurant reviews traditionally start with the décor. That’s not my interest, but I did notice that we sat in a rustic style bar for our pre-prandial Pernod before going through to a restaurant which was much bigger inside than it appeared from the outside. Not all the twenty four tables were full on the day of our visit

Tinned tongue used to be a Saturday lunch regular in my youth, but I haven't seen it for years. Lynne’s starter of poached tongue bore only a slight resemblance to the Sixties stand-by. Thin slices of tongue surrounded a salad of rocket and green beans like the petals of a flower. Such soft and exquisite meat with a fine, delicate flavour required, and got, a salad with a gentle and unemphatic dressing. It seems a shame that tongue is so rarely available in supermarkets.

My monkfish sat on what the menu called a tomato, ginger and chilli sauce, though it was actually half way between a sauce and a salsa. If the tail was char grilled to perfection, the deceptively simple sauce was possessed of magical properties. At first it seemed merely tomato, then the ginger emerged, growing gently to dominance before finally the chilli ran a little dance round the edge. Another forkful was required to see if it happened again. I could quibble by saying a sauce should accompany the fish, not vice versa, but it was too good to bother with such trifles.

Sadly, Lynne's main course sole was also char grilled, and what may be appropriate for a robust monkfish was far less suitable for a delicate sole. It was over cooked and over-charred. A complaint brought an offer of an alternative main course (but by then it was already eaten and the human stomach is finite) but no apology and no visitation from the chef to discuss the issue.

I had rack of lamb on a casserole of spring vegetables. The tender, pink chops were from the youngest of lambs and provided texture, while the lamb breast in what was really a cawl beneath provided as much sheepy flavour as anyone could want. The spring vegetables, even the remarkably earthy potatoes, were packed with flavour and freshness.

We took a rest for digestion and to finish our wine. With the mix of fish and meat we had required two half bottles, thus effectively reducing the vast wine list to about a dozen choices. For the white we chose a Chardonnay from the Ste Michelle winery in Washington (the west coast state, not the east coast capital city), the red was a Gigondas from a well know producer. I ordered the Chardonnay with trepidation; during our time in Washington we learned that the locals had no great regard for their state's oldest and largest producer. But that was twenty five years ago, this unoaked chardonnay was light bodied but had varietal character, good acidity and a pleasing dryness. The Gigondas, though, was disappointing. I always look at the appellation and the bottler, but need to remember to check out the vintage; I am sure this will open up in a few years and be a fine wine, but it was too young, too dark and too closed to live up to expectations.

Lynne’s dessert involved intensely flavoured redcurrant and blackcurrant sorbets presented in a brandy snap basket. I had Bakewell tart with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream. When I was little and holidays meant two weeks with my grandmother in Porthcawl, a visit to Borza's ice-cream parlour was a special treat. Their ice-cream was like nothing else I had tasted and I used to spend weeks anticipating the visit. The secret, I know now, was real vanilla; while the rest of the world used vanilla as a synonym for 'plain', Borza's treated it with respect. Borza's is long gone from Porthcawl and many of the Borza clan now lie beneath a modest mausoleum in the municipal cemetery (just across the path from my grandmother). This scoop of vanilla ice-cream took me back to my childhood and was undoubtedly the best I have eaten for fifty years. The Bakewell tart became something of a sideshow, so its amazing lightness was almost unappreciated, and its lack of jammy/marzipanny flavours somewhat overlooked. I drank an Austrian Beerenauslese with the Bakewell tart which was, in its very different way, as sweet, subtle and wonderful as the ice-cream.

Overall, four and three quarter wonderful dishes out of six, is not bad, but the amuse-bouche were no more than a tiny cheesy biscuit and the limp cherry hiding in the petit fours was disappointingly slimy. The meal was touched with greatness, as it should be in any Michelin starred restaurant, but there were faults, too. Maybe we were unlucky on the day, but we have eaten better at this price elsewhere.